Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1887-01-26
UNTER DEN LINDEN.

Some Plain Facts About Thoroughfare
Famed in Romance.
The Inter den Linden, to the un-
travelled American who has heard of it
in books, or rather romances of travel,
is long, cool, delightful thoroughfare
lined with magnificent trees, through
whose dense shade the midday sun is
unable to penetrate. He imagines that
there are distributed along it elegant
seats that invite the wearied pedestrian
to rest himself; that the turf is soft and
cool to the feet, and that birds sing in
the overhanging branches Look on
this picture and then on this. The
Inter den Linden is broad avenue,
perhaps three-quarters of mile in
length, of the most prosaic character.
In the center is walk forty or fifty
feet broad, without a spear of grass,
dirty, sandy, gravelly, on either side
of which is double row of trees of the
size usually described in America as
''scrub." Few of them exceed twenty
feet in height, and these are not lindens
at all, but elms OF horse chestnut. or
trees of quite different Species A
few lindens are said to remain at the
end toward the Thiergarten, if one is
disposed to look them up in order that
he may keep up the fiction. The trees
are not only small, but they have an
air of decay. They give an impression
that it is the autumn of their existence.
They furnish no protection whatever
from the sun to the tired pedestrian
who endeavors to rest himself on the
hard wooden benches. AS to the idea
entertained in the word W1ater, if any
thing could get under them, it must
have been in times that long antedated
the era of the Great Frederick. In
these days small dog could hardly
get its entire person within the con-
tracted shadow of one of the trees. So
much for Inter den Linden, regarded
as shaded avenue.
But looked at as the ordinary street
of a city, the Inter den Linden is quite
another affair. There are broad car
riage ways on either side between the
promenade and sidewalks. The walks
are Of ample width, and the street is
lined, with some few exceptions, with
stately buildings of modern construc-
ton. Along it are elegant cafes, pic
ture galleries, handsome shops, and at
the further end near the solid stone
bridge over one of the arms of the Spree
which you cross in going to the public
museums, are the palaces of the En-
peror and Crown Prince, the immense
university and the interesting museum
of arms. About these buildings there
are openings sometimes in the form of
little parks or gardens, but all the
spaces that can possibly be used by
vehicles are paved with thick slabs of
stone, which with the thick-walled and
profusely pillared palaces and museums
give the impression that Berlin is being
built not merely for to-day but for all
time. At the other end of the Inter
den Linden is the Brandenburg Gate,
modelled on the Propylea of Athens,
and built in 1898, when Ger man archi-
lecture was more inclined to the classic
than it is at present The old build
ings will soon, in the march of inn
provement, be replaced by new ones,
but even as it is, and leaving its pre-
tensions to shade and comfort out of
the question, the Inter den Linden may
be considered as one of the handsomest |
streets in Europe. And the varied life
which it presents is truly that of the |
great capital. Everybody comes to the
cafes. Here are seen the English aris-
tocrat, the London clerk in limp and |
gray on the Continent for tw o-weeks'
holiday, the American who travels |
much in the north of Europe. in the
summer the Berlin burghers, and espe-
cially the Berlin military officer, neat,
handsomely uniformed, and so erect
that no synonyms can describe his per-
pendicularity. But though his clothes
are so tight that he seems to have been
run into them, which makes free and
easy locomotion difficult, his air is that
of the soldier, and of the soldier con-
scious of the victories that his country
has won, and of those she is, OF he
thinks she is, destined to win in the flu
Cor. San Francisco ChY01a-
icle.